I'd hate for you to think that everything is perfect here in Boston. Check out this dirty road snow, for example. The snow gets plowed off the streets and off the sidewalks, mostly to the parkways. It's really important to take your boots off when you go inside someone's house. The boots track in snow, and no one wants to walk on the wet floor and get their socks wet. Also, the city puts down salt, sand, and chemicals to make the snow safer to drive and walk on. I regularly sweep up sand and pebbles from my front hallway. It's also illegal not to clear the snow off of your car. When you're driving, heat from the cab can melt the snow just enough to make the bottom of it icy and slide right off of your car, and onto the car behind you. That happened the other day, and a guy's windshield was pierced by the ice from the car in front of him. Thankfully, the fellow wasn't hurt.
I helped a coworker plan a retreat for all of the software developers in our department. The day before, he and I went to the Harvard Club, where the event was to take place, to check it out. Afterwards, he had to go to school while I returned to work. (He's working full time and getting a Masters, woah.) I knew I was close to work, and thought I had a good idea of where I was, so I decide to walk instead of taking the T or a cab. I got turned around and had to call another coworker for help getting back! Thankfully, I don't get lost too often, and thankfully I could call for help. The point of the story is that the next two photos are from my half-hour walk back to work. And the retreat, which was this past Friday, went smoothly and was fun.
Poor little kids; they have to ride bikes in the snow during winter. And below, here are some icicles.
Thanks for the awesome hat and scarf, Sunshine!
Billy is writing his memoirs. Actually, he's just picking out movies on Netflix. Milo and Otis should be coming in the mail soon...
My friend Britt said it was only a matter of time before I slipped on the ice. He said it was an inevitability. The other night when I was walking home from work, I tried to kick a bush to knock the snow off of it. I was standing on ice, I found out a fraction of a second later, and boom, down I went. Greg and I always walk home together, since we live so close, so I made him capture the moment.
The next day, I put my face in the snow. It's really cold, but it feels kind of neat.
I wrote my name in the snow on the Quad at work. Earlier that morning, I'd seen some lewd snowmen, but they'd been knocked over by the time I grabbed a friend at lunch to play in the snow. There was ice beneath the snow, so we each cleared out a section, maybe two-foot circles, and we slid around like we were mini-ice skating.
The going got steep.
The snow had stayed cold enough that the individual flakes were still visible, all neatly piled on top of the others. And it was fun to lick.
Greg and I drove to New Hampshire yesterday to hike Mt. Monadnok, the second most hiked mountain in the world, behind Mt. Fiji. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a poem about it, called Monadnok, and Henry David Thoreau wrote the first serious naturalist inventory of the mountain.
When it snows, a group of snow plowing trucks will go to the highways and each one will be in a lane, staggered, so that they can push all of the snow from one lane to the next, and off the road. On our drive, we were stuck behind several herds of snow plows.
Back in town, below, I like how the snow piled on every surface, even if the surface is the tiny feet to a chair.
Icicles and snowfall.
If you check out the tracks through the Quad, you'll see mine aren't the only ones. Sometimes I feel a little silly tromping through the snow when other people walk on the cleared sections, but I'm not the only one. And I'm sure it's not only Californians who go out of their way to be in the snow here. Here's a picture of me getting up from making a snow angel.
And the geese, sleeping along Muddy River.
Those are pelicans on top of the rock.
Here's a different kind of pup - my parents' golden retriever, Jackson Blue, with the remnants of a duck toy in his mouth.
Some kids were sledding down a hill. That's still on my to-do list.
I'll bet this jacket will keep me warm.
I love the stickiness that causes the snow to stick to the trees. There are so many different kinds of snow.
